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We
all have the tendency to react to events depending upon how close
they are to home. If it touches someone in our family or a close
friend, our emotions will be affected more strongly than if it is a
colleague at work or a friend's cousin. If tragedy strikes
elsewhere in our town or country, we are touched more deeply than
if it happens in a "foreign land." Think of your response to the
news of today's bombing in Madrid. Then of your reaction to last
week's bombing of the mosque in Iraq. Then think of
9/11.

While it is normal to feel closely the joys and sorrows of
those we know, it is more difficult to understand why the deaths of
an American, if you are American, should affect you more than the
deaths of an Iraqi, unless you have been programmed to respond this
way. All things considered, shouldn't the death of one human be
equal to the death of another? Shouldn't the joy of a stranger give
rise to the same feelings whether or not he or she lives 100
kilometres away or 10,000?

Unfortunately, from our birth we are trained to react to the
lives of others based upon a series of criteria that we had no
participation in elaborating. If you are in North America, the
tragedy in Madrid today will most likely affect you more than the
bombing of the mosque in Iraq a few days ago. The Spaniards are
Europeans, Christians, members of the civilization that
"discovered" and conquered the New World. The Iraqis are Moslems
and live halfway around the globe.

We
spend our lives drawing lines between ourselves and the rest of the
world, accumulating facts and elaborating theories on why we are
different than others. This acknowledgement of difference then
becomes the justification for weighing and measuring and
calculating why our differences make us
better than others. We see ourselves as more
democratic, or more elite, or more holy, or more powerful, or
cleverer, or richer, or less attached to the world, or white or
black or yellow, or part of a conquering people, or part of a
conquered people. Any difference can be used to justify a feeling
of self-righteousness.

Everywhere we look, no matter what country we live in, what
kind of house we call home, what political system our politicians
use to manipulate us, what economic system the haves use to oppress
the havenots, we live immersed in a sea of propaganda to justify
those structures. Our languages, our flags, the food we eat, the
clothes we wear, the cars we drive or refuse to drive, our sports,
all serve to divide us one from another.

It
is no surprise, then, that we react to the suffering of others
based upon an internalised hierarchy of us and them.

Notice that the group identifications work by attaching a
strong emotional charge to these differences. Americans are filled
with pride because they are "Americans." There was no personal
choice in being born an American, so it is difficult to see what
real value there could be for someone to attach so much importance
to a mere chance event. It is not only Americans that succumb to
this emotional manipulation. We all do on one level or another, or
on many levels at once. For some it is national pride, for others
it is racial or monetary, and many, many others depending upon the
circumstances.

Once
the programming is complete through our schooling and exposure to
the media, they become vehicles of our emotional destabilisation as
we read about "attacks" upon others who we associate with our own
groups or go to movies where the "hero" blows away people who look
different than we do. When the "national pride" button is pushed,
it is very difficult for someone strongly identified with that idea
to resist the programming that will follow. The various socialist
parties, who had vowed never to participate in "bourgeois wars,"
immediately fell into line at the start of World War I. More
recently, look how easily the American people were maneuvered into
war after the events of 9/11.

Once
the emotional trigger is set off, reason goes out the door, and the
emotional energy released can be used to move people in the
direction chosen by those pulling the trigger.

It
has become a science.

Note
also that the ideas that become emotional triggers are all related
to what we call the 'A' influences, that is, aspects of the
material world: national differences; language, colour, and
religious differences; economic or political differences. This is
true even when the war is waged in the name of God, a favourite
pastime of the monotheistic religions. These battles are for
temporal power. The Soul has no need for war.

How
Machiavellian to keep us focused on our differences, because it is
very clear from history and from the daily news, that there is a
group of people of great power who are able to see the events of
the planet without identifying themselves with these divisions, a
group that is able to play upon them to keep us divided, victims of
our programming and of our insistence that our group is better than
the others. Because this group has no such allegiances, they can
set one group against another at will, not with the aim of building
anything, but rather, with the intention of sowing chaos and
confusion. This group does not identify with any of the differences
that are perceivable in the material world. These differences are
but the playground for their control over the chicken coop we call
earth.

On
the Signs page, we present the world from a different point of
view, a point of view removed from the influences of nation,
colour, or creed. When we speak of "objective reality," we are
speaking of a reality that is not seen through the filters of
programmed emotional responses. The horror of 9/11, the bombing in
Madrid, or an attack on an Iraqi mosque are equal. When we are able
to step back and see the common horror of these events, we can also
see how they fit into the larger picture of the manipulation of
peoples the world over. Having broken with the programming, we are
free to work for other explanations, explanations that fit the
facts without the deformations that come from emotional
identification.

By
breaking with the 'A' influences, we can begin to align ourselves
with the 'B' influences, the longer viewpoint of the evolution of
the Soul. As long as we remain within our programming, we are the
subjects of our mechanical responses to our triggers. This is a
closed loop of action-reaction. There are only two ways out. The
first comes when the those who set up the loop end the game. Such
an ending cannot be in your favour because it is still controlled
by others. They have decided. If your only existence is as a part
of the game, then you cease to exist with the game.

The
second way out is to refuse to react according to the program. In
this way, you remove yourself from the game but open yourself to
horizons never before imagined. You see the game from the
exterior.

But
this does not mean that you will no longer feel the horror; rather,
you will stop making distinctions based upon your programming. You
will understand how suffering is generated by our inability or
refusal to see the game for what it is. No longer identifying
solely with "American" or "French" or "Iraqi" or "Christian" or
"Moslem" or "white" or "black," you will understand this suffering
as lessons for the soul and its overcoming as the rich soil within
which the soul can grow.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has vowed that those
responsible for the train bomb attacks in Madrid will be hunted
down and punished.

Ten
bombs exploded without warning on trains at three stations during
the morning rush hour, killing 190 people and wounding more than
1,200.

Mr
Aznar made it clear he believed the armed Basque separatist group
Eta was behind the co-ordinated blasts.

But
a political group close to Eta denied that it carried out the
attacks.

Campaigning for Sunday's general election in
Spain has been suspended, and three days of national mourning have
been declared.

In a
national address, Mr Aznar urged Spaniards to take to streets in
protest at the attacks on their capital - and some have already
heeded this call.

"Terrorism is not blind,"
he said.

"These terrorists wanted to
cause as much damage as possible. It is a massacre. They have
killed many people simply for being Spanish."

He
added: "The criminals who have caused so many deaths today will be
arrested... We will succeed in finishing off the terrorist
band."

A reader in Madrid sends us
his analysis:

"Spanish television being
Spanish televison they were on the scene very quickly and showing
pictures of the dead in the carriages before even the famillies
knew of who had died and who had survived. We are talking close up
zooms here which was utterly abhorrent and the worst in tabloid
t.v. I feel so sorry for the relatives who may have witnessed these
pictures which will no doubt be played over and over and
over.

The
Spanish people are LIVID. That's all I can say. The emotional
energy here is therefore primed and ready to be
funnelled.

Bearing in mind the
hobbknobbing of Aznar (who himself survived a terrorist attack
before he was elected)it begs the question what the backscratching
accomplished. We know that Aznar was given a significant help in
satellite surveillance technology and made significant arrests from
within the ranks of the Basque terrorist group ETA. Aznar also
wanted to put Spain on the map internationally and raise its
profile. I think Aznar is fairly clueless and as such is being
played as the conservative pawn that he is. It was another country
that could be utilized as a "victim" for helping America and to
further the "War against terrorism" expenditure and indignation. I
bet you that ETA wasn't behind this and it was engineered for the
reasons above using operatives or pay offs within ETA perhaps?
There is something decidely fishy about this. It wreaks in fact. It
is true, that ETA has traditionally bombed during elections i.e. a
car bomb but never on this scale and never to the extent that all
sympathy for ETA will surely be down the pan. The foot soliders
that plant bombs within ETA or the IRA, etc. may be stupid, young,
fanatical etc. but the movers within this groups are certainly not,
being as they are tied to profitable "businessmen" who are far
removed from political ideology to the extent that they are
essentially pyramidal mafia operations.

However, on this occasion I
think the ETA old boys club has been co- opted for the wider push
from the secret cult/shadow controllers etc. And as ever, the
people are being herded into one big monumental slaughter that will
make this atrocity look like a picnic."

Today
is a sad day for the people of Spain and for all humanity. This may
seem a little melodramatic, but, as we shall see, it is very likely
that this attack is linked in many ways to the current US sponsored
world wide "war on terror" and the dire state in which the world
finds itself as a result. In attempting to understand who is
responsible for today's carnage in Madrid, as always, we must look
to who benefits.

While the Spanish
government has immediately laid the blame on the basque separatist
group ETA, there are few if any hallmarks that suggest that this
group was behind the bombing. Firstly, the attack, and the
approximately 200 people that were killed as a result, dwarfs any
previous attack by ETA. Until now, the highest death toll was 21
killed in a supermarket blast in Barcelona in 1987. In the last 3
years there have been just 3 people murdered by ETA. Furthermore,
in every previous attack ETA has claimed responsibility, and in
almost all cases they have telephoned a warning beforehand. There
was no warning, no claim of responsibility. Indeed, Arnaldo Otegi
the leader of ETA's political wing Herri Batasuna, has said he
refuses to believe the attacks were carried out by ETA and blamed
what he called the "Arab resistance" for the bombings.

Clearly something does not
fit.

Many
commentators are justifiably perplexed as to
why ETA would carry out such an attack, since it merely serves to
compound public resentment to their cause. This was no attack
against the ruling elite of Spain, who would be the logical object
of the ire of ETA. It was rather an attack against the working
classes of Madrid as
El Mundo points out. As such it is all the more
perplexing and unlikely that this was the work of the Basque
separatist group.

In the aftermath of the
9/11 attacks, a worldwide clampdown on "terrorist" organisations
was instituted, with many European governments increasing
"anti-terror" resources and activities. As a result, just over a
year ago the political wing of ETA was outlawed by the Spanish
government. In the last year Spanish authorities have arrested more
than 150 members or collaborators in Spain and France, including
the leaders of ETA's commando network. A bombing at this time then,
with large numbers of civilian dead, would be tantamount to suicide
by the ETA leadership. Are we to believe then that the intelligent
and highly skilled ETA leaders were completely unaware of this
fact? Or that they actually desire to bring the full force of the
Spanish security apparatus down upon them? It seems
unlikely.

Long ago, the IRA in
Ireland realised that the armed struggle was ultimately futile.
ETA, after more than 30 years of guerilla warfare, appeared to have
realised the same. Why then would they carry out an attack killing
hundreds of innocent civilians that can in no way serve their
cause? We are reminded of the continued "suicide bombings"
by "Palestinian terrorists" in Israel that serve only to further
Israel's agenda, while at the same time seriously damaging the
Palestinian cause. So who's agenda is best served by
today's attacks in Madrid?

We should remember that
almost 90% of the Spanish people were against the US and Spanish
government backed Iraq war. Most Spaniards apparently disbelieved
that there was any "terror" threat from Iraq, a fact that Prime
Minister Aznar chose to completely ignore. It is no secret that
Aznar, along with Bush and Blair was one of the most vocal
exponents of the reality of the "terror threat" and used it as a
way to consolidate his power. It is surely no coincidence then that
the bombing happened just 3 days before Spanish voters go to the
polls to elect a new government.

Who then had the most to
gain from a "terror attack" just before voting
day?

There has been speculation
in the Spanish press that Aznar's ruling "Partido Popular" and his
potential successor Mariano Rajoy might be defeated in the upcoming
election. Looking at the US and the effects of a well timed terror
attack, and the political boon it provided for the Republican
party, we might speculate that the today's bomb is a timely
gift to Aznar and his now likely successor Mariano Rajoy.
The attack also benefits Bush and Sharon and the Neocons in the
Pentagon, all of whom have played the terror card for all it is
worth, and depend upon continued "terror" attacks to justify their
positions.

In a telling remark, some
Spanish journalists are already calling today's attack "A
Spanish 9/11". If the atrocities committed by the US and
Israel in the aftermath of their 9/11 are an indicator of
what is to come, then the Spanish people, have much more than ETA
to concern them.

Another interesting point
to note is that just last week, a previously unknown group warned
of bombs planted on French railway lines. At the time we presented
theories about who might be behind such threats and again who had
most to gain from them. We pondered on the possibility that in that
case too, the US and Israeli backed "war on terror" would be the
main beneficiary. As we investigate further into the activities of
Israeli and US agencies over the years, we find evidence to suggest
that they are literally everywhere.

Spain's government rejected
an offer from Israel's Mossad secret service in the 1980s to kill
Basque separatist guerrillas at their bases in France, according to
a Spanish journalist's interviews with former police officials.
Adolfo Suarez, Spain's first democratically elected prime minister
after the country emerged from dictatorship, refused to mount a
"dirty war" against Basque ETA guerrillas, said the newspaper El
Mundo, citing a new book by Pilar Urbano, a renowned Spanish
journalist.

Suarez was not immediately
available for comment. In Urbano's new book, "I entered Spain's
secret police," she quotes the then chief of police as saying
Israel's Mossad had offered to eradicate ETA for Suarez. Suarez, a
centrist, took over as Spain's political leader just months after
General Francisco Franco's dictatorhip ended in late 1975. "Mossad
offered to mount a dirty war against ETA for Suarez, but Suarez
didn't want to," she quoted the police chief as saying.
[...]

Despite the Spanish
governments insistence that ETA is responsible for today's attacks,
due to the inconsistencies with previous ETA attacks, there is much
speculation that it may have been al-Qaeda, or an al-Qaeda
affiliated group. If this turns out to be the case, we should
remember that in all likelihood, al-Qaeda is an asset of American
and Israeli intelligence agencies.

The United States government has been provided with concrete
evidence that the Israeli Mossad and other Israeli intelligence
services have been involved in a 13-month effort to "recruit" an
Israeli-run, phony "al-Qaeda cell" among Palestinians, so that
Israel could achieve a frontline position in the U.S. war against
terrorism and get a green light for a worldwide "revenge without
borders" policy. The question: Does the United States have the
moral fiber to investigate?

Evidence of the Israeli
dirty tricks burst onto the public scene on Dec. 6, when Col.
Rashid Abu Shbak, head of the Palestinian Preventive Security
Services in the Gaza Strip, held a press conference revealing the
details of the alleged plot, as his agency had put the pieces
together. The revelations undermine the "big lie" that Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon has used to justify new brutal attacks on
Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and other occupied areas.
Sharon claimed on Dec. 4 that Israeli intelligence had "hard
evidence" of al-Qaeda operations in the Gaza Strip. Now, the top
Palestinian leadership has shown the United States and other
nations how Israeli intelligence entities were creating that
al-Qaeda link [...] See
here for more

In researching the history
of alleged ETA bombings, we came across a very interesting
story.

Back in 1995 ETA was blamed
on a car bombing in Madrid in which one person was killed. At the
time "El Mundo" reported that one of the people slightly injured
was an "Israeli beggar". While this story is verifiable
here,
there are other, as yet
unverified claims that the Israeli was not a beggar at
all, but was in fact an Israeli Colonel named Saul Goldblatt. It is
alleged that the initial reports of the man's true identity were
scrubbed from another Spanish paper, "El Pais" at the behest of
Spanish media magnate Jesús de Polanco, owner of the paper in
question. It is further alleged that Mr Polanco has very definite
ties to Israeli and US government institutions.

Giles Tremlett in Madrid
and Suzanne Goldenberg in Jerusalem
Tuesday June 19, 2001
The Guardian

The
Hamas suicide bombers who have wreaked havoc in Israel recently are
being resupplied with explosives by the Basque separatist group
Eta, Spain's El Mundo newspaper claimed yesterday.

The
Spanish interior minister, Mariano Rajoy, said yesterday he could
not confirm El Mundo's report, which was based on information from
"unnamed separatist sources". But he said he would not be surprised
if it was true.

"On
numerous occasions we have had clear proof of the relationship
between terrorist groups," he said.

The
Spanish news magazine Tiempo, in a separate report, quoted unnamed
French police sources as confirming that a deal had been struck
between Hamas and Eta at a meeting last September in northern
Italy.

That
deal, police said, saw Eta sell a stock of Titadine dynamite,
stolen from a French factory by a commando unit made up of members
of Eta and the Breton Revolutionary Army (BRA), for small arms and
money. The explosives apparently came from a haul of eight tonnes
of dynamite stolen from a Titadine factory in Plevin, Brittany, in
September 1999.

The
dynamite was split between Eta, which was at the time nominally
observing a unilateral ceasefire, and the BRA. Although French
police recovered part of the explosives, Eta kept up to four tonnes
of dynamite - several times what it has used in the 19 car bombs it
has planted in Spanish cities since then.

El
Mundo said Hamas and Eta were brought together by a middle eastern
arms dealer.

"The
material was handed over in an eastern European country where there
are organised mafia groups trading in arms, and specialists in
money laundering," the French sources told Tiempo. They did not say
when the explosives were handed over, nor whether they had reached
Israel.

Israeli diplomats in Madrid
said they could not confirm the deal or a visit allegedly made by
10 Hamas members to the Basque country over the New Year. "But it
seems logical that two terrorist groups should work together," said
an embassy spokesman.

While it is well know that
Hamas and ETA have worked together, it is not so well known that
Hamas is very likely a creation of, and managed by,
Israel.

Speaking in Jerusalem Dec.
20, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer made the connection
between the growth of the Islamic fundamentalist groups Hamas and
Islamic Jihad, and Israel's promotion of the Islamic movement as a
counter to the Palestinian nationalist movement. Kurtzer's comments
come very close to EIR's own presentation of the evidence of Israel's instrumental role in
establishing Hamas, and its ongoing control of that
organization.

Kurtzer said that the
growth of the Islamic movement in the Palestinian territories in
recent decades—"with the tacit support of Israel"—was
"not totally unrelated" to the emergence of Hamas and Islamic Jihad
and their terrorist attacks against Israel. Kurtzer explained that
during the 1980s, when the Islamic movement began to flourish in
the West Bank and Gaza, "Israel perceived it to be better to have
people turning toward religion rather than toward a nationalistic
cause [the Palestinian Liberation Organization—ed.]." It
therefore did little to stop the flow of money to mosques and other
religious institutions, rather than to schools. [...]

The
ambassador's comments are an acknowledgment of what any serious
Middle East observers knows: Hamas has always been seen as a tool
by which Israel could undermine the nationalist movement led by
Palestinian Authority President and Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat. Similar statements by
Arafat have been dismissed by Israel as "cranky" propaganda. In an
interview with the Dec. 11 Italian daily Corriere della Sera,
Arafat said, "We are doing everything
to stop the violence. But Hamas is a creature of Israel which at
the time of Prime Minister [Yitzhak] Shamir [the late 1980s, when
Hamas arose], gave them money and more than 700 institutions, among
them schools, universities and mosques. Even [former Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak] Rabin ended up admitting it, when I charged him
with it, in the presence of [Egpytian President Hosni]
Mubarak."

We
all remember how the world almost unanimously condemned Israel's
racism in Durban, South Africa. At the time, it adopted an equation
that equated Zionism to racism. Soon enough, the free suspicious
gift of 9/11 came about and transformed the equation to one that
equates Islam to terrorism.

Only
the naive, the dull-witted or the believers in the Greater Middle
East (GME) promote that the perpetrators of the massacres in
Karbala and Al Qazimiah are Arab Muslim Sunnis. The aim is clear.
Martin Indyk, former American ambassador in Israel said it before;
it is to implement a policy of divide and conquer. The instruments
of the crime are not important, for they could be bought in the
cheapest of prices, if the decision to ignite ethnic or sectarian
strife has already been taken. In Iraq today there is only one
active player, at least when it comes to security, who is in dire
need for such strife - after the Iraqis have proven their awareness
and unity. In all respects, the main beneficiary from such acts is
the American-Israeli partnership and the intention behind them is
replacing the culture of resistance and suicide operations against
the Israeli and American occupier into a culture of absurd and
futile terrorist crimes.

An
Israeli teenager suspected of hacking into a US police system and
erasing records has been arrested and questioned by local
police.

The
unnamed 19-year-old was released on bail after appearing before a
court yesterday in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba. The
youth, who may be charged with computer fraud offences, allegedly
hacked into a police computer system in Pennsylvania. Israeli police brought the youth in
for questioning following a tip-off from the FBI, which is leading
the investigation in the US.

Details of the alleged attack remain sketchy, but Israeli
police spokesman Gil Kleiman told AP that the hacking "destroyed some records
in the computer system of the [Pennsylvania] police
department".

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon, in a move to please Washington, has ordered
a cut of 110 miles to the route of Israel's controversial West Bank
barrier, a senior political source said on Wednesday.

News
of the proposed change to the planned route of the 450-mile strip
of wire and concrete broke on the eve of a visit by U.S. envoys to
discuss Sharon's plan for unilateral steps to separate from the
Palestinians if peace talks fail. [...]

Police offered a rare
inside look at Israel’s increasingly bloody mob wars today
after arresting four suspected hit men from Belarus and seized a
large weapons stash in their hideout, including shoulder-held
missiles, explosives and silencers.

An
MPs father and several alleged crime bosses were among the contract
killers’ would-be targets, police said.

Israel, with a million
immigrants from the former Soviet Union, is considered a major
outpost of the Russian mafia. A recent string of gangland bombings
and shootings which have killed or maimed innocent bystanders have
put increasing pressure on the police to wage war against organised
crime.

The
last straw came in December, when a bomb aimed at alleged mafia don
Zeev Rosenstein – the seventh attempt on his life –
left him with scratches but killed three passers-by and wounded 18
in Tel Aviv.

Three days later, the
government ordered a crackdown on organised crime. Police said
today that in recent months they rounded up 41 people on charges
such as attempted murder, drug-smuggling, trafficking in women and
extortion.

In
the biggest catch, detectives arrested four men from Belarus and 14
Israelis on suspicion they tried to kill several mob
bosses.

In
the apartment of the suspected hit men in a Tel Aviv suburb,
officers found pistols, silencers, assault rifles, anti-tank
missiles, explosives, night vision equipment and hand grenades.
They also seized a stock of disguises and makeup.

“This was a
collection with a deadly potential on an unprecedented
scale,” police said in a statement. [...]

Ultra-Orthodox Jews under
the influence of alcohol attacked four Arab cab drivers in
Jerusalem on Monday, lightly wounding them.

On
Joseph Karo Street, dozens of drunken ultra-Orthodox Jews attacked
an Arab cab driver. When police arrived at the scene to rescue the
driver, they also beat the policemen, and tried to steal equipment
from their patrol car. The cab driver sustained light wounds.
Police dispersed the crowd and arrested three suspects.
[...]

When
Vladimir Putin became president four years ago, the Kremlin was
largely impotent.

Defiant, often corrupt governors held seats in the Federation
Council, which gave them heavy political weight, immunity from
prosecution and the freedom to run their territories like
fiefdoms.

Oligarchs ran swaths of the economy in similar fashion, while
the Kremlin turned a blind eye, or, in some cases, winked,
conferring perks like cars with government tags to the privileged
few.

The
nomenklatura, who were complicit in this merger of government and
business, had grown antsy that they would be exposed once Boris
Yeltsin left office, but after Putin's succession was assured, they
had relaxed, feeling confident he would protect them.

All
these characters were fair game, however, for NTV, which skewered
them along with Putin on its popular weekly satire program,
"Kukly." The feisty station, which had supported the Kremlin's
opponents in the elections, was also unrelenting in its coverage of
the Kremlin's bloody war in Chechnya.

One
by one, Putin has brought them all into line with the power
vertical.

Comment:For a look at who's who in the new Putin government,
click here.

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- A former
Haitian foreign minister and popular South Florida television
talk-show host was selected Tuesday to become Haiti's next prime
minister.

Gerard Latortue, a critic
of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was chosen after two
days of painstaking deliberations by a U.S.-backed ''council of
sages'' to fill the power vacuum created Feb. 29 when Aristide
resigned. Latortue will lead a transitional government that will
pave the way for presidential elections early next year.
[...]

A
high-ranking military officer reveals how Defense Department
extremists suppressed information and twisted the truth to drive
the country to war.

By
Karen Kwiatkowski
Salon.com
March 10, 2004

In
July of last year, after just over 20 years of service, I retired
as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force. I had served as a
communications officer in the field and in acquisition programs, as
a speechwriter for the National Security Agency director, and on
the Headquarters Air Force and the office of the secretary of
defense staffs covering African affairs. I had completed Air
Command and Staff College and Navy War College seminar programs,
two master's degrees, and everything but my Ph.D. dissertation in
world politics at Catholic University. I regarded my military
vocation as interesting, rewarding and apolitical. My career
started in 1978 with the smooth seduction of a full four-year ROTC
scholarship. It ended with 10 months of duty in a strange new
country, observing up close and personal a process of decision
making for war not sanctioned by the Constitution we had all sworn
to uphold. Ben Franklin's comment that the Constitutional
Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia had delivered "a republic,
madam, if you can keep it" would come to have special
meaning.

In
the spring of 2002, I was a cynical but willing staff officer,
almost two years into my three-year tour at the office of the
secretary of defense, undersecretary for policy, sub-Saharan
Africa. In April, a call for volunteers went out for the Near East
South Asia directorate (NESA). None materialized. By May, the call
transmogrified into a posthaste demand for any staff officer, and I
was "volunteered" to enter what would be a well-appointed den of
iniquity.

The
education I would receive there was like an M. Night Shyamalan
movie -- intense, fascinating and frightening. While the people
were very much alive, I saw a dead philosophy -- Cold War
anti-communism and neo-imperialism -- walking the corridors of the
Pentagon. It wore the clothing of counterterrorism and spoke the
language of a holy war between good and evil. The evil was
recognized by the leadership to be resident mainly in the Middle
East and articulated by Islamic clerics and radicals. But there
were other enemies within, anyone who dared voice any skepticism
about their grand plans, including Secretary of State Colin Powell
and Gen. Anthony Zinni.

From
May 2002 until February 2003, I observed firsthand the formation of
the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and watched the latter
stages of the neoconservative capture of the policy-intelligence
nexus in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. This seizure of the
reins of U.S. Middle East policy was directly visible to many of us
working in the Near East South Asia policy office, and yet there
seemed to be little any of us could do about it.

I
saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy favored by some executive
appointees in the Pentagon used to manipulate and pressurize the
traditional relationship between policymakers in the Pentagon and
U.S. intelligence agencies.

I
witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured
and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and
distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact
falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the
president.

While this commandeering of
a narrow segment of both intelligence production and American
foreign policy matched closely with the well-published desires of
the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, many of us in the
Pentagon, conservatives and liberals alike, felt that this agenda,
whatever its flaws or merits, had never been openly presented to
the American people. Instead, the public story line was a
fear-peddling and confusing set of messages, designed to take
Congress and the country into a war of executive choice, a war
based on false pretenses, and a war one year later Americans do not
really understand. That is why I have gone public with my account.
[...]

WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has lent her name and presence to a
lecture series co-sponsored by the liberal NOW Legal Defense and
Education Fund, an advocacy group that often argues before the
court in support of women's rights that the justice
embraces.

In
January, Ginsburg gave opening remarks for the fourth installment
in the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Distinguished Lecture Series on
Women and the Law. [...]

The
liberal Ginsburg's involvement with the legal activist group, and
recent outside activities by a conservative colleague, Justice
Antonin Scalia, have touched off a debate over what kinds of
extra-judicial appearances and contacts are appropriate for Supreme
Court justices.

The
code of conduct for the federal courts does not set clear rules for
judges' involvement with advocacy groups. But it warns jurists to
steer clear of outside legal activities that would "cast reasonable
doubt on the capacity to decide impartially any issue that may come
before" them. [...]

Comment:Apparently, belonging to any "liberal" advocacy group is
verboten, but installing a conservative Texan governor in the White
House - against the will of the people - is
acceptable.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Setting
up a possible murder trial defense, Terry Nichols' lawyers say
state and federal prosecutors did not provide them more than a
dozen FBI documents that raise the possibility of additional
accomplices in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. [...]

States will wind up paying
at least $29 billion this year to cover the costs of programs and
initiatives handed down by the federal government -- from education
to homeland security -- as Washington leaves an increasingly large
burden for states, according to a new report. [...]

[...] For years, reference data were based on male values,
leading to both under-diagnosis and misdiagnosis of heart disease
in women. In occupational health, safe levels for a wide variety of
workplace chemicals are based on exposure level thresholds derived
from young men. Those whom such exposure is most likely to affect
simply don't figure. [...]

Children
Up to 90% of medicines taken by children have been tested only on
adults. Dosages are usually calculated by weight as if children
were mini-adults. In fact, children's bodies use drugs very
differently. Their liver and kidneys work at a different pace,
depending on age, meaning that higher doses than expected might be
required for older children while the reverse may be true in the
very young. There are differences too in the way that their bodies
absorb drugs.

Older people
Few trials include people over 70. Trials of drugs such as
anti-inflammatories, used widely by older people in the treatment
of arthritis, are skewed towards a younger age group. The most
severe side effects (gastrointestinal bleeding) are seen
predominantly in older people, the very people excluded from
trials.

Ethnic minorities
Responses to drugs vary with racial origin. For instance, the
incidence of "poor metabolisers" (people with low levels of liver
enzymes involved in drug breakdown) varies from 4% in Caucasians to
25% in Asians. Afro-Caribbeans may get better control of blood
pressure with one type of drug than another but despite these
variations, ethnic minorities are rarely included in
trials.

Women
The possibility of pregnancy and variations in the menstrual cycle
historically meant that women of reproductive age were not included
in trials though women differ fundamentally from men in their
responses to many medicines.

Occupational health
Safe exposure levels for many industrial chemicals have been set
using thresholds derived almost exclusively from studies of young
white men.

Alcohol tolerance
For many years, calculating contrasting alcohol tolerances was
thought to be a simple matter of weight correction. Today it is
known that levels of an enzyme that metabolises alcohol (alcohol
dehydrogenase) are key. Levels in women are about a fifth of those
in men and there is also ethnic variation.

Exercise tolerance
Much data relating to treadmill tests was initially based on
readings obtained only from men.

The
robots are coming. And when they get here, they will take out the
trash.

Mobile, intelligent robots
that can perform tasks usually reserved for humans are starting to
creep into mainstream society and could become a
multibillion-dollar market in a few years.

iRobot says it has sold
hundreds of thousands of units of the Roomba, a self-guided,
self-propelled vacuum cleaner that sells for around $200, in just
one year.

Other inventors are eyeing
the health care market. Joe Engelberger, widely known as the father
of robotics, is trying to get funding to build robots that will
dress, cook for and generally take care of senior citizens. Home
health care robots are being tested in Japan, while U.S. hospitals
are already using machines to deliver charts, carry medicines or
even assist in surgery. [...]

Whittaker has also created
robots that can drive harvesters, clear out sewer lines and clean
up nuclear waste. [...]

iRobot's PackBot is
designed with practicality in mind. It's a 40-pound battlefield
robot designed to perform reconnaissance missions, help wounded
soldiers, find chemical leaks and deliver equipment, all over
rough, unpredictable terrain.

"One took a 25-foot fall and righted itself," during an
operation recently in Afghanistan, Angle said. "It
is an incredibly mobile 800MHz Linux machine."

PackBots aren't cheap: They
cost between $50,000 and $100,000 apiece. But their main
customer--the U.S. government--seems happy. Besides deploying
PackBots in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Army has given iRobot $25
million to develop automated battlefield vehicles.

This $99 tech toy
from Wow Wee has programmable "reflexes" and can walk, run and
dance; pick up and throw objects; and even kick an
Aibo.

Another recent success is
the Predator, an unmanned plane used to attack al-Qaida in Yemen
and other locations. The Department
of Homeland Security is expected to issue several large research
grants to this project in coming years.
[...]

The
da Vinci Surgical System from Intuitive Surgical, for example, is a
set of precision robotic hands for doctors. The system, which costs
a little more than $1 million, can drill through bone or make
incisions.

Surgery is made far less
intrusive because the machine can accurately control its movements
and "see" in 3D through graphical images. That, in turn, makes
recuperation quicker, less painful and cheaper, according to the
company. Around 192 da Vinci systems
are in use at hospitals to date. [...]

Still, robot capabilities
are growing rapidly. A 1,500-gram
human brain can churn at about 100 trillion instructions a second,
according to a paper recently published by Carnegie Mellon's
Moravec--nearly three times the power of the Earth Simulator, the
world's most powerful computer. [...]

The
human brain aside, anthropomorphism will grab a piece of the
market. Sony, Honda and some other Japanese companies are marketing
robot companions, and a $99 "RoboSapien" will be coming soon from
tech-toy company Wow Wee.

Mimicking human behavior in
most robots remains complex, however, and the demand remains low.
"You can get a robot to speak with you, but you can't get it to
talk Spinoza with you," Engelberger said. [...]

Comment:It is most
interesting that the world would create physical automatons that
are so symbolic of the mechanical nature of man. Aside from making
people even more lazy, what is the point? Sending robots off to
fight wars may sound great, but real people will still die. In a
sense, the rise of robots is the ultimate act of dehumanizing and
tranquilizing the masses. Eventually, robots could be smarter,
stronger, faster - mechanically better than humans in every
respect. If man's only purpose is to be a lazy machine served by
other machines, why exist at all?

It is quite clear that thus
far, technology has not truly improved humanity in any respect. We
are hypnotized by our technological toys. Although communication
technologies have advanced dramatically, they are still used to
propagate lies. We have "smart" weapons that have not reduced
civilian casualties or the frequency of war itself, even though our
leaders would have us believe otherwise. Although alternative,
clean energy sources exist, the oil cartel tells us to use and love
their product, and we nod and smile.

We would like to think that
the problem is "out there", and that if we vote for a different
politician, all will be well. The truth seems to be that we are
docile sheep, addicted to the very items that are ultimately
leading to our own spiritual - and perhaps physical - obsolescence
and annihilation.

On the other hand, it
appears that this reality is the way it is for a reason. If we view
everything around us a school, we may see that we should not
endeavor to change anything. Perhaps we should use drugs like
technology as a "stimulant" to work on ourselves and to see,
instead of allowing them to tranquilize us as intended. Obviously,
the capacity for objective seeing is lacking in our
default mechanical mode of being. If nothing changes within us, our
path will lead to nothing.

Only by realizing that our
mechanical objectivity is, in reality, subjectivity, will
we be able to proceed on the path to truth. This realization, of
course, requires a great deal of work. The first step into the
unknown is perhaps the most difficult. The task is certainly not
made any easier by the nature of the reality in which we presently
find ourselves. Mired in the 'A' influences, man is lazy. In the
physical world, we create all sorts of gizmos to make our lives
"easier". We drive cars with cruise control, fly in airplanes with
autopilot, pay our bills automatically each month, and even use
bread machines that don't even require that we mix any ingredients
together by hand.

Bread is perhaps a good
example of laziness. In America, most people simply buy bread from
the local supermarket. The bread may sit in a truck and on store
shelves for months before it is consumed. As a result,
preservatives must be added to ensure that the bread remains
"fresh". The drawback is that the flavor and nutritional value may
suffer. Contrast this process with bread available in France.
Although French supermarkets do have prepackaged, preserved breads,
most people purchase their bread fresh each day from a boulangerie,
or bakery.

The bread is not loaded
with preservatives or other chemicals, and is usually based on very
old recipes. If the bread is not eaten, it is generally hard as a
rock by the next morning. Although the technology exists to produce
more "convenient" bread with a longer shelf life, the French prefer
their bread fresh and delicious. They have decided that excellent
bread, a cultural tradition, is worth the effort of traveling to
the boulangerie each day. In fact, they even develop friendships
with their local merchants. What a concept!

It is evident that the
easy, lazy route is not always the best path. As individuals, we
each have the choice of the type of "bread" we eat as food for the
soul. Do we rush for the easiest, longest-lasting chemical
concoction, or do we choose the French bread?

Our inner world is like a
large stone slab. We must recognize that the block of stone in
front us can be shaped into something different. At first,
the task of sculpting the rock may seem impossible. As we are, we
believe that we have only our hands to work the stone. Thus, after
theorizing that the we can at least attempt to reform ourselves, we
must seek the appropriate tools to do so. The question is how we
choose to use the tools in front of us. And before we can use any
tool, we must be able to see that there are, in fact, tools
available for our use. As we gain knowledge, we may find an even
better tool.

TOKYO, March 9 —
QRIO, a humanoid robot developed by Sony Corp., is set to make its
debut as a musical conductor, taking the baton for the Tokyo
Philharmonic Orchestra in the performance of a Beethoven
symphony.

QRIO
is due to conduct the first movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5
at a Tokyo Philharmonic concert in central Tokyo on Saturday [13
March].

QRIO, first unveiled in
2000, is a robot that uses artificial intelligence and other
sophisticated technologies to make performances such as walking on
two legs, dancing, recognizing faces and voices and holding
conversations.

On
Tuesday [9 March], a public rehearsal for the coming concert was
held. The 58-centimeter-tall robot appeared before some 70
orchestra members as he grumbled, "I'm feeling nervous."

Microsoft has been mailing
free copies of its pricey Office productivity software to
government employees, but CNET News.com has learned that at least
two federal agencies are warning recipients to return the gifts or
risk violating federal ethics policies.

Since the launch of Office
2003 last year, Microsoft has given out tens of thousands of free
copies of its flagship software, which retails for about $500, to
workers at its biggest customers. The giveaway was expanded to
government workers this year, but ethics offices at the Department
of the Interior and Department of Defense have said the offers
constitute unauthorized gifts and must be returned.
[...]

In
the early morning hours of June 30,1908, a huge fireball streaked
across the Siberian sky and crashed into the Earth.

“The sky split apart
and a great fire appeared,” said one eyewitness in Vanavara,
Russia. “It became so hot that one couldn’t stand it.
There was a deafening explosion and my friend was blown over the
ground across a distance of six metres. As the hot wind passed by,
the ground and the huts trembled. Sod was shaken loose from our
ceilings and glass was splintered out of the window
frames.”

What
was this cosmic visitor? For years, researchers have gone back to
the site and tried to find out. Antonina Vasiliev, ten, walked with
her father Nikolai and her brother, 100 kilometres through mosquito
infested swamps and bogs to the site.

“I still
remember,” she told the Belleville group of the Royal
Astronomical Society at its March 5 meeting at Loyalist Pioneer
building.

Antonina showed slides her
father and other scientists have taken investigating the
phenomenon. Her father died in 2001 and she is dedicating her talks
to his memory. Antonina currently works as a microbiologist at a
Canadian organics company in Belleville.

The
event in 1908 is called the Tunguska named after a river in Russia.
The object left a trail of light 800 kilometres long and at first
nobody knew what it was. Some thought it was an explosion of
anti-matter. Others suggested a black hole. Some even claimed it to
be the work of extra-terrestrials. But most scientists now agree it
was a comet or an asteroid.

“It was the biggest
event of its kind in recorded history,” Antonina
said.

The
power of the blast felled trees outward in a radial pattern of over
2,000 square kilometres, fires burned for weeks. The mass of the
object has been estimated at about 100,000 tons and the force of
the explosion at 40 megatons of TNT, 2,000 times the force of the
atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima in 1945. By comparison, the
explosive force of the Arizona asteroid that struck some 50,000
years ago, has been estimated at 3.5 megatons.

“Had such a cosmic
body exploded over Europe instead of the desolate region of
Siberia,” notes Nikolai Vasiliev in a report, “the
number of human victims would have been 500,000 or more, not to
mention the ensuing ecological catastrophe.”

Vasiliev stresses why
continued investigations of the Tunguska event are important.
“Because it will happen again, sometime.”

Antonina adds that with
research they can make predictions and be ready. She urged members
of the astronomical society to study the event themselves by
researching old news reports around the world for any mention of
unusual sky events or appearances during the five-day period before
and after June 30, 1908. [...]

Comment: A very
interesting article that includes a link to one of the better
Tunguska sites:
The Cosmic Mystery of the Century. Biological
mutations and strange geomagnetic disturbances occurred after the
blast.

GARDEN GROVE, California
– There is certainty in the thought that an asteroid or comet
loitering in deep space has Earth’s name on it. While a
civilization-snuffing impact is a low probability, it is not
zero.

But
there are other trouble-makers out there too. They are the smaller
asteroids, and far more numerous. They too could mess up the day,
but in a more localized way.

The
technologies and techniques to defend Earth from such malicious
cosmic interlopers were tackled at The Planetary Defense
Conference: Protecting Earth from Asteroids held here February
23-26, and sponsored by The Aerospace Corporation and the American
Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). [...]

Comment: So many
seem to be gathering lately and discussing the dangers of impact.
How will this be used by the government? Well:

Morrison bracketed part of
the NEO hazard problem by asking: Should we develop this technology
now? Or wait until a specific threat is identified? Furthermore,
should the United States, as the world’s only superpower,
assume responsibility, or should this be an international
effort?

The threat will probably be
used for justification of a build up of space based weapons,
perhaps after a particularly disastrous hit. Whether these weapons
will be actually used for NEO's is another question.

The
California Institute of Technology and Cornell University are in
the planning stages for a new 25-metre telescope to be built in
Chile. The submillimetre telescope will cost an estimated $60
million and will be nearly two times larger in diameter than the
largest submillimetre telescope currently in existence.
[...]

A
new study from the University of California shows, for the first
time, that the deep-ocean circulation system of the north Atlantic,
which controls ice-age cycles of cold and warm periods in the
Northern Hemisphere, is integrally coupled to salinity levels in
the Caribbean Sea.

This
research reinforces concerns that global warming, by melting the
glacial ice of Greenland, could quickly and profoundly change
salinity and temperatures in the north Atlantic Ocean. One
consequence might be much colder weather in northern Europe and
Britain and perhaps even in eastern Canada and the U.S. northeast.
[...]

During the first week of
March 2004, Stromboli Volcano continued its normal "Strombolian"
eruptions, with frequent summit explosions at the high end of
normal activity. Some larger explosions sent scoria to an elevation
of 200m above the craters, and produced fallout of fresh bombs and
lapilli on Pizzo Sopra la Fossa. During February 2004, explosive
activity was high at the three summit craters, and there was
significant growth of the cinder cones located in the
craters. [...]

Colorado's latest list of
polluted waters has grown to 117 river, stream and lake segments,
the highest number in the 15 years the state has tracked such
problems.

The
list of "impaired" waters, approved Wednesday by the state Water
Quality Control Commission, includes stretches in every major river
basin, including the Colorado and South Platte, and involves nearly
two dozen contaminants harming fish and degrading water.
[...]

HOHHOT, March 11 (Xinhuanet) -- A snowstorm that hit north
China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region from Tuesday evening to
Wednesday morning has caused traffic to come to a halt on a section
of a national highway and on the Harbin-Manzhouli and
Hailar-Manzhouli railways.

On
the eve of his trip to Ohio to "focus on jobs," President Bush
claimed yesterday that "we're creating jobs - good, high-paying
jobs for the American citizen." His comments come despite the
country having lost more than 2 million manufacturing jobs since he
was elected. In Ohio, which lost 270,000 manufacturing jobs alone,
the economic crisis has raised questions about why the president
last month strongly endorsed the outsourcing of U.S. jobs to cheap
overseas labor markets. A look at the president's donors offers an
answer.

Misleader compared the
companies that outsource the most U.S. jobs (referred to as
"captive remote services companies" on page 11 of the trade
association
report noted below) with the president's campaign finance records.
The analysis shows that the president's campaign has pocketed more
than $440,000
and his party more than $3.6 million in just 4 years. These
companies have a direct stake in the president publicly supporting
outsourcing and doing everything he
can to water down or oppose legislation to curb the
practice.

The
breakdown of campaign contributions is as follows:

TOP
OUTSOURCER: American Express
Contributions directly to the President Bush: $39,000
Soft Money contributions to the Republican Party:
$422,405

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Thursday that
flexible labor markets had proved their worth by creating jobs in
the United States and that employment was poised to pick
up.

"I
am fairly well
convinced that employment is about to pick up or
should be more explicit, new hires are going to be picking up
reasonably quickly if this economic
growth rate continues," he told the House of
Representatives Education Committee, adding he supported extending
unemployment support. [...]

Comment:In other
words, if Americans want to be employed, they better pack their
bags and move to one of the Asian countries to which US companies
are outsourcing their jobs. On the other hand, one could always
join the War on Terror by visiting the local armed forces'
recruitment office.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) -
Turkey's army has asked local authorities for information on
individuals who could undermine the state, including ethnic
minorities, magicians and people who practice meditation, local
media said on Wednesday.

In a
rare statement to the press, the military General Staff confirmed
it had asked authorities to "gather intelligence because it was
necessary to makes plans to take effective measures against
incidents that could arise."

Turkey's largest newspaper
Hurriyet on Wednesday published a document from the army command
asking for information on people who supported the European Union
and the United States, as well as "the socially elite, members of
artistic groups and children of wealthy families."

Foreigners living in Turkey
and ethnic minorities, including Circassians, Gypsies, Albanians
and Bosnians, were on the list. Satanists, freemasons, sympathizers
with U.S. white supremacists in the Ku Klux Klan and groups that
meditate or congregate on the Internet were also targeted, Hurriyet
said.

Even
necromancers, or magicians who summon spirits from the dead, were
included, the paper said. "Writers and thinkers who are working
against Turkey" were also to be investigated. [...]

Crucify Jesus Again and Again!
With our new fully crucifiable Jesus action figure, your child can
spend hours crucifying our Lord and saviour over and over again!
This a great instrument for teaching children about Christian ways
and rituals.

But wait, THERE'S
MORE!

Buying the Jesus Christ
Action Figure entitles you to 25% off our other products, such as
Bathsheba and Uriah the Hittite. Send Uriah to his death, then
claim Bathsheba as your own. A big hit with the kiddies! Plus our
new John the Baptist action figure with one button
decapitation.

The
Environmental Protection Agency is studying the chemicals released
into the air when a bag of microwave popcorn is popped or
opened.

Exposure to vapors from
butter flavoring in microwave popcorn has been linked to a rare
lung disease contracted by factory workers in Missouri, Illinois,
Iowa and Nebraska. The National Institute for Occupational Safety
and Health has said it suspects the chemical diacetyl caused the
illnesses.

However, health officials
insist people who microwave popcorn and eat it at home are not in
danger. [...]

A
technique for inferring how much of a drug a patient has taken may
be putting innocent people behind bars.

The
problem seems to be that doctors are incorrectly applying the
method to corpses, in a bid to establish how much of a drug a
deceased person took, or was given, before their death. That error
can result in vastly inflated readings. [...]

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Reality
is coming to Disneyland's fantasy world, in the form of permanent
security gates. Bowing to terrorism fears, the Walt Disney Co.
plans to build the gates at the Disneyland Resort next fall. The
company had resisted security gates around Disneyland and the
California Adventure theme park next door, believing the sense of
fantasy would be spoiled. [...]

The Pocket Watch Of Über
Doom

This concept
is modeled after the 1947 Doomsday Clock which was added to, or
subtracted from, based on world crises and political snafus. We
here at Signs believe that it is the Entertainment Industry and not
Despots Like Bush and Blair, who will ultimately lead to the heat
death of the Universe.

Here we are again, facing the horrible prospect of terrorist
attacks on Mickey. And then what happens. Beyonce Knowles (Bouncy
Know-it-all) gets compared to Janet Jackson and Madonna. I see this
as a definite indication that not only will the Stock Market crash,
mothers won't produce milk, and calves will be stillborn, but that
Seinfeld could conceivably be given his own show again. Facing this
horrible prospect, I see no other alternative than inspecting the
bottom of an Eristoff bottle while listening to my extensive Spice
Girls Collection.

** End Of Humor
**(If you like, you can purchase a wholly functional
Signs Logo Sick Bag, for those moments when reality
strikes.)

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